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Saturday, August 6, 2011

International Forgiveness Day

Before I subconsciously post anything stupid here, I want you to know that everyone, like me, has their own personal opinions. And my opinion is that if you find someone's idea offensive, just ignore it.

I found out from Willie Revillame on the TV5 program Wiltime Bigtime that tomorrow, August 7, 2011, is International Forgiveness Day. Now I realized something: I should finally post everything of my best knowledge and belief here.

Okay, let's start with some ancient issues. In this example, I'm going to discuss about a famous (well, sort of) biblical figure whom people (especially Catholics, even myself back then) judge too much. His name is Judas Iscariot.

So you'd think, "Oh look, Kazaki has been under the control of Lady Gaga again". Jeez, no. This though came to my head even before Gaga's single - way back when I got a copy of Manga Messiah. I realized something.

If we look at biblical records and teachings of the scriptures, we would know that God is an all-forgiving God. In fact, Jesus Himself said that "You must forgive your neighbor not seven times, but seventy-seven times. You must forgive him the same way God forgives you."

Here's my question: If God forgives everyone, why not Judas? Is he not a human being? Or is it because he committed suicide? And why do you think he committed such? Think about it. Judas hanged himself because he could not bear to witness the results of what he has done. OR if you search "The Gospel of Judas" on Google, you would find out that there is a forbidden scripture that tells of a "secret pact" between Judas and Jesus. In that pact, it is said that everything is planned by God and Jesus Christ, and Judas is part of the plan. He was the one to take the blame.

Okay, so if you don't believe that story, you might stick to my first theory: God's ultimate forgiveness. Here's the thing: if you read about Peter's three-time denial of Jesus, you might think of the same thing, except of course, Peter asked for forgiveness and was "officially" forgiven by Christ. But how about the other person who asked for forgiveness by killing himself? You know why he did that? He feels like there is absolutely nothing he can do to undo what he did.

Theory one or two, for me, it's God's plan. And at the same time, God sets us up so that we may learn how to forgive people. I mean, did Jesus said "Damn you Judas" when he was crucified? No. He said "God why have you abandoned me?" Clearly, it was not Judas' fault - he was only an instrument of God. In short, what I'm trying to say is, there can't be a story without an antagonist.

And that's why there's nothing wrong with Lady Gaga's "Judas". It's just a song of romance being compared to some biblical story. She isn't attacking religion, she's putting it to art.

But of course, the CCP exhibit thingy WAS kind of...creepy.

So to summarize my first part of this post, I strongly believe that "God forgives everyone, even the worst of humans." And besides, we are all like Judas too sometimes - we commit sins so grave that sometimes we just want to die to make up for them. Well, don't we? But of course, we'll never stop asking for forgiveness if so. And in the same way, we should also never stop giving forgiveness to others. Nobody is perfect - so all that we can do is accept the imperfectness of each other.

Now, onto the second part of my post: the 21st century internet wars.

If you're a frequent internet user on "mainstream" sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blah blah blah, you have probably experienced having a fight with someone on the net. This is called "internet flame" - meaning someone is starting a "flame" or a "war" with someone, especially to one whom the poster thinks is a dumb or stupid person. Sometimes, conflicts go from ideologies to even personal attacks. This is very shameful and disgusting.

When I watch videos that are in the current trends or are just too controversial, I usually see a lot of posters / users fighting each other with trash words that are simply idiotic and pointless. As a precaution, just don't "saw-saw" with them or butt in to their conversation - you'll just mess things up. They'll realize soon what they did was wrong.

Here's one "netiquette" advice that I am strongly supporting right now: "Learn to respect others". Don't attack someone just because he or she's different, his answer was dumb or stupid, or anything like that. Imagine if you're the dumb one who would get attacked like that. Seriously, from celebrities, singers, politicians, and even to other famous people like athletes - a lot of them do cat and dog fights on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. But believe me - I have never seen (in all my life) anything as brutal, stupid, and jerk-like as YouTube posters.

Just one reminder: if you find a person completely violent, offensive, or doing excessive spams, you can always use the Report or Flag buttons. But then again, users like that will ALWAYS create another account, so flaming and spamming couldn't really be abolished that easily. We should just give up and accept that God allowed the existence of such people.

So here's the summary for my second post: "Accept other people's opinions and shut up when you need to." A peaceful and children-friendly World-Wide-Web is not really impossible if we take the responsibility to clean it from absurdness and stupidity.

To summarize the whole post, we should all learn something. Forgiveness is a gift from God, so we should use it wisely. Sinners are also humans. Idiots are also humans. And all human beings deserve forgiveness, because that's how God want it to be - a world giving each other respect, peace, and love.

How about you, are you ready to forgive your "Judases" in life? Just a random thought.